After she won the money, she paid off her house, then realized that was “a mistake” because her credit score dropped, and she didn’t recoup the investment in her house when it sold.
She also paid off bills with her winnings, she said. But Schooley, 56, still works as a manager of a group home for people with disabilities.
Her advice to future winners: contact an attorney and financial adviser ASAP.
Schooley still plays the lottery, but not as often as she did years ago, she said.
She will be one of the hundreds of thousands of the people in 45 states, District of Columbia and U.S. Virgin Islands, trying to be the next billionaire when the Powerball numbers are drawn at 10:59 p.m. Wednesday. The jackpot — the largest in the history of the lottery — increased to $1.5 billion Tuesday and will rise again before the drawing. The jackpot started at $40 million on Nov. 7, 2015, and is the result of 19 drawings with no jackpot winner.
If a winner chooses the cash option instead of the 30 annual payments, they would receive an estimated $930 million before taxes, according to the Ohio Lottery Commission.
The Journal-News tried to contact about 50 of the 25,000 lottery winners in the region who have won $600 and more since the lottery started in the mid-1980s. But most of their telephone numbers were either disconnected or were not listed in the phone book and on www.whitepages.com. Only one phone message left by the Journal-News was returned.
Several other winners were listed as trust funds, and their addresses were bank locations. Trust funds, which can be established by an attorney, protects the identity of the winner from the public. Other multi-million dollar winners are listed as estates.
In 2003, two area residents won $31 million and $18 million, the largest jackpots on record. The West Chester resident who won $31 million, and received $15.5 million after taxes, has a legal name of The Heart Of It All Trust.
Being a Lottery winner didn’t change a Middletown woman. But then again, Betty Ledford, 86, won $125,000 — not $1.5 billion — in the Cash Explosion game in 2013. Cash Explosion is an official Ohio Lottery TV game show, which is broadcast every Saturday night on television stations throughout Ohio.
With the money, Ledford said she had some trees removed out of her yard, replaced her windows and made other repairs.
“It made things a little easier,” she said.
She worked at the Middletown Public Library for 37 years, retiring in 2008, five years before her lottery win.
Ledford rarely plays the Ohio Lottery, but the allure of possibly winning $1.5 billion may be too much, she said with a laugh.
“I might have to go get me one,” she said.
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